Category Archives: Pre-existing conditions

Here is my question for the week, with all this talk of Medicare for All what happened to Obamacare the pride of the Democratic Party and the Golden Trophy of President Obama?

This was and still is a great idea to provide health care for many/all and was designed by very smart people. The only big problem was how to pay for it and therefore how to make it sustainable, especially after removing the Individual Mandate. Why then Medicare for All with all of its own problems? Susannah Luthi wrote that the Centrist House Democrats on Wednesday launched a push to revive Obamacare stabilization talks, two hours after their progressive wing unveiled new Medicare for All legislation.

But Now Some of the Moderate Democrats revive talks to fund CSRs, reinsurance

The 101-strong New Democrat Coalition wants to fund reinsurance and cost-sharing reduction payments in a package that closely resembles the deal struck last Congress by Senate health committee leaders Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

That bill, known colloquially as Alexander-Murray, fell apart at the last minute following a GOP-Democratic dispute over including anti-abortion language.

“Well, we would call it Schrader-Bera-Kuster,” joked Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), one of the co-chairs of the coalition’s healthcare task force as he referred to fellow co-chairs Reps. Ami Bera (D-Calif.) and Annie Kuster (D-N.H.).

He said the group wants to take another run at it, as this is a “different Congress, with different makeup,” and voters gave Congress a mandate to make the individual market more affordable.

To prod leadership into action, the group sent a letter urging prompt committee action to key committee leaders—Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) of Energy and Commerce, Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) of Ways and Means, and Bobby Scott (D-Va.) of Education and Labor.

“Building upon your work and the work of the New Democrat Coalition last Congress, we urge your committees to deliver on the promises made to our constituents by prioritizing strengthening the ACA and continuing the path toward universal affordable coverage,” the group wrote.

The group hopes numbers are on their side. It’s now the largest ideological caucus in Congress and owes its swelling ranks to the 40 Democratic freshmen who swept into office largely with the ACA on their platform.

The coalition announced its healthcare policy wish list two hours after progressive Democrats’ 70-minute press conference unveiling the new Medicare for All or single payer legislation.

Coalition members downplayed their role as opposing single payer—highlighting instead the pragmatism of lowering ACA individual market premiums as action Congress can take immediately for people who remain unsubsidized.

They also said they want to discuss public options, such as a policy to allow people to buy into Medicare or Medicaid.

Democratic leaders have pushed support for the ACA as a key part of their agenda, but proposals so far this Congress haven’t included funding for CSRs—whose cut-off led to the silver-loading that boosts premiums for people who can’t get subsidies—or reinsurance.

The Pallone-Neal-Scott proposal from last year includes reinsurance and CSRs, but enthusiasm for funding CSRs has waned since last year. Liberal advocates like the fact that the CSR cut-off led to bigger subsidies for low-income people.

And while insurers hope stabilization talks resurface, their profitability on the exchanges is soaring.

On Wednesday, Pallone told an audience at an Atlantic Live event that he’s most interested in growing the subsidies—increasing the pool of people who qualify for them and raising what’s available for people who currently receive them.

“It’s clear now that people at the higher income level, who were not eligible for those subsidies before, that we need to raise that, for people with a higher income, because there are people now making over $85, $90k a year who don’t get any subsidy,” Pallone said Wednesday morning. “In a place like New Jersey, that’s not a lot of income for a family of four.”

He also confirmed that the House will push back against the Trump administration’s expansion of short-term, limited duration plans.

Pallone was pressed on the cost problem: that an increase in subsidies puts the government on the hook for most of the high premiums, he pointed to his proposal to set up a reinsurance pool.

On whether Congress could overcome last year’s dispute over abortion language, Schrader was optimistic.

However, a Republican aide for the Senate health committee responded by referring to a comment made to Modern Healthcare last week.

“The only way Congress could pass an appropriation for CSRs is if Democrats reverse course and agree to apply the Hyde Amendment which applies to all other healthcare appropriations,” the staffer said.

Dems hit GOP on health care with additional ObamaCare lawsuit vote

At the beginning of January, Jessie Hellmann reported that in the first week of this year the House passed a resolution backing the chamber’s recent move to defend ObamaCare against a lawsuit filed by GOP states, giving Democrats another opportunity to hit Republicans on health care.

GOP Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), John Katko (N.Y.) and Tom Reed (N.Y.) joined with 232 Democrats to support the measure, part of Democrats’ strategy of keeping the focus on the health care law heading into 2020. The final vote tally was 235-192.

While the House voted on Friday to formally intervene in the lawsuit as part of a larger rules package, Democrats teed up Wednesday’s resolution as a standalone measure designed to put Republicans on record with their opposition to the 2010 law.

A federal judge in Texas last month ruled in favor of the GOP-led lawsuit, saying ObamaCare as a whole is invalid. The ruling, however, will not take effect while it is appealed.

Democrats framed Wednesday’s vote as proof that Republicans don’t want to safeguard protections for people with pre-existing conditions — one of the law’s most popular provisions.

“If you support coverage for pre-existing conditions, you will support this measure to try to protect it. It’s that simple,” said Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) before the vote.

Most Republicans opposed the resolution, arguing it was unnecessary since the House voted last week to file the motion to intervene.

“At best, this proposal is a political exercise intended to allow the majority to reiterate their position on the Affordable Care Act,” said Rep.Tom Cole (R-Okla.). “At worst, it’s an attempt to pressure the courts, but either way, there’s no real justification for doing what the majority wishes to do today.”

The Democratic-led states defending the law are going through the process of appealing a federal judge’s decision that ObamaCare is unconstitutional because it can’t stand without the individual mandate, which Congress repealed.

Democrats were laser-focused on health care and protections for people with pre-existing conditions during the midterm elections — issues they credit with helping them win back the House.

The Trump administration has declined to defend ObamaCare in the lawsuit filed by Republican-led states, which argue that the law’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions should be overturned. It’s unusual for the DOJ to not defend standing federal law.

The House Judiciary Committee, under the new leadership of Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), plans to investigate why the Department of Justice decided not to defend ObamaCare in the lawsuit.

“The judiciary committee will be investigating how the administration made this blatantly political decision and hold those responsible accountable for their actions,” Nadler said.

Democrats are also putting together proposals to undo what they describe as the Trump administration’s efforts to “sabotage” the law and depress enrollment.

“We’re determined to get that case overruled, and also determined to make sure the Affordable Care Act is stabilized so that the sabotage the Trump administration is trying to inflict ends,” said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over ObamaCare.

One of the committee’s first hearings this year will focus on the impacts of the lawsuit. The hearing is expected to take place this month.

The Ways and Means Committee, under the leadership of Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass), will also hold hearings on the lawsuit and on protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

Those two committees, along with the Education and Labor Committee, are working on legislation that would shore up ObamaCare by increasing eligibility for subsidies, blocking non-ObamaCare plans expanded by the administration and increasing outreach for open enrollment.

And Now the House Democrats Decry ‘Junk Plans’ and are introducing bills to reverse Trump-inflicted ACA “sabotage”

Shannon Firth noted that the Democrats blasted attempts by the Trump administration to “sabotage” the Affordable Care Act during a House Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.

“We’re inviting people back into a world with mirrors and trap doors, which was exactly the place we wanted to get away from when we passed the ACA,” said Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), who called on his colleagues to “push back against these junk plans.”

House Democrats introduced four bills to roll back administration efforts to loosen or circumvent the ACA’s insurance requirements. In the very unlikely event that they pass the Republican-controlled Senate and gain the president’s signature, they would:

Require all short-term health plans to include a warning explicitly stating which benefits are included and which aren’t

Restore marketing and outreach funding for ACA exchanges

Rescind a regulation that extended the allowable duration of short-term plans (including renewals) to just under 3 years

Cancel the administration’s new guidance around 1332 waivers, which relaxed certain “guard rails”

Republicans complained that ACA plans are unaffordable for middle-income Americans who don’t receive subsidies, and argued that the Trump administration’s actions allow those same Americans more options for cheaper health plans.

“They’re really trying to give consumers new options, particularly those who were shut out of the market because of costs,” said Grace-Marie Turner, a witness at the hearing and president of the Galen Institute, a conservative think tank, in defense of the administration.

Republicans also pushed back on criticism of the administration’s 1332 waiver guidance, saying Democrats were denying states the right to innovate their programs and instead of trying to impose the will of Washington.

Turner stressed that states are better positioned to regulate their own local health insurance markets.

Rep. Michael Burgess, MD (R-Texas), the subcommittee’s ranking member, said that none of the bills being discussed would increase the availability of “reasonably priced plans.”

Are Short-Term Plans Junk?

Much of Wednesday’s discussion focused on short-term plans, which are cheaper than ACA exchange plans but offer a shrunken set of benefits.

In August, the Trump administration issued a final rule extending the duration of these plans for just under 12 months and made plans eligible for renewals for nearly 3 years. Previously, the plans were available for just under 3 months at a maximum.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who introduced a bill to rescind the short-term plan rule, said she’s worried “the public is being snookered here.”

“Maybe you were healthy when you signed up. Then, something happens — you have a big medical claim. It triggers an alarm and [the insurers] go back and look at your application, and pull all your medical records again and go, ‘Oh, you should have told us about this,'” she told MedPage Today after the hearing.

Even in cases where a patient was not diagnosed with an illness prior to enrollment, insurers find ways to justify cancellation, she said.

Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) offered one example, a Chicago businessman who was encouraged to buy a short-term plan by a broker even after disclosing symptoms of serious back pain. After he enrolled, the businessman was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Insurers then reviewed his medical records and determined that the businessman’s cancer was a pre-existing condition because he had visited a chiropractor in the past, leaving him with over $800,000 in medical bills after 6 months, Barragán said.

“You would never expect your cancer treatment to be denied because you’ve had bad back pain,” Keith said. “That’s something that, I think, disclosures can’t fix.”

Jessica Altman, Pennsylvania Insurance Department commissioner, pointed out that short-term plans may not cover ACA-defined “essential health benefits.” She cited a study showing that less than 60% cover mental health, only about one-third cover treatment for substance use disorder or prescription drugs, and none included maternity benefits.

Altman also noted that short-term plans aren’t required to abide by the ACA’s medical loss ratio requirements. The two largest short-term plan vendors, which control 80% of the market, spend less than half of each premium dollar on “actual medical care,” she said.

But Turner said short-term plans are meant to serve as “bridge plans” for individuals such as early retirees, people in the gig economy, and young entrepreneurs starting a business, who would convert before long to more comprehensive coverage. Turner also emphasized the plans’ affordability — with premiums less than half of what an ACA plan would cost — and stressed that consumers understand the plans aren’t permanent.

Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) pointed out that states are allowed to impose limits on short-term plans or ban them altogether.

“I think it’s important to note that we’re not forcing anyone into this. We’re giving flexibility to the states,” he said.

He suggested bringing in witnesses from states where plans are available to learn their true impact.

New Waiver Guidance

Another bill, explored at the hearing, would revoke the administration’s changes to 1332 waivers, which loosened standards for what qualifies as healthcare coverage. The administration’s waiver also allows ACA subsidies to be spent on short-term plans.

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who chairs the full Energy & Commerce Committee, said the changes “turn the statute on its head,” exceeding the administration’s authority and “contrary to congressional intent.”

Keith agreed. She said the guidance was inconsistent with the statute itself. Instead of improving access to healthcare, the guidance “undermines” it. In particular, subsidizing short-term health plans “flies in the face of 1332,” she said.

Several Republicans, including Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), ranking member for the full committee, highlighted the successful implementation of reinsurance programs in states such as Alaska, Minnesota, Oregon, and others, claiming that Democrats oppose state innovation.

Keith clarified that the reinsurance programs were approved under the 1332 rules as written by the previous administration, without the Trump administration’s changes.

Any waivers approved under the Trump administration’s new guidance would likely trigger a lawsuit, she said. As for short-term health plans, several patient advocacy groups have already filed a lawsuit targeting the administration’s new guidance for those plans.

So, I am not going to pursue this issue anymore because I want all of us to consider my first question-Why are Bernie Saunders and most of the multiple Democrat candidates running for President in 2020 touting Medicare for All instead of coming up with fixes for the Affordable Care Act/ Obamacare?

Let us discuss possible fixes to Obamacare next week.

And to a lighter side:

You can now buy an actual hospital room on Amazon

Amazon is increasingly moving into the business of selling supplies to hospitals.

Now, that includes “smart” hospital rooms that can be purchased on its marketplace as of Thursday.

The units are targeted to hospitals and are made by a company called EIR Healthcare.

MedModular

You can buy almost everything on Amazon. And that includes, as of Thursday, a “smart” hospital room in a box.

A New York-based company called EIR Healthcare is now selling units of its hospital room, dubbed MedModular, for $814 a square foot on Amazon.com, which the company claims are more affordable than traditional construction. The design is customizable but all the rooms come with a bathroom and a bed.

These rooms don’t come cheap at $285,000 per unit, but they are targeted to business buyers that are increasingly flocking to Amazon.

So who would buy the units?

“We’re targeting hospitals and health systems,” said Grant Geiger, CEO of EIR Healthcare, the company selling the units. “There’s a trend towards bringing more transparency in the health care space,” he added.

Geiger said he’s currently seeing an uptick in interest from hospitals in using the units for things like simulation labs, or urgent care facilities.

Geiger has also considered looking into potential customers in the military.

But hospital administrators are an obvious place to start, he said, as Amazon is already selling them medical supplies ranging from bedpans to syringes. Previously, large hospital systems would buy everything through group purchasing organizations, or GPOs, which provided discounts but also a lack of transparency around costs.

MedModular

Now, Amazon is looking to carve out its own slice of that lucrative business with its own growing portfolio of medical supplies.

Geiger said he talked to that group for months before he got permission to sell his units on Amazon’s marketplace. He also needed the company’s approval to ship and deliver the product, which involves transporting the units in giant shipping containers down the freeway.

Actually, I thought that President Trump did a good job even being conciliatory in his State of the Union speech even covering various aspects of healthcare. Joyce Frieden the News Editor of MedPage stated that Healthcare played a major part in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, with President Trump covering a wide variety of health-related topics.

Only a few minutes into the speech, the president foreshadowed some of his healthcare themes. “Many of us have campaigned the same core promises to defend American jobs and … to reduce the price of healthcare and prescription drugs,” Trump said. “It’s a new opportunity in American politics if only we have the courage together to seize it.”

A few minutes later, he touted some of his administration’s actions so far. “We eliminated the very unpopular Obamacare individual mandate penalty,” Trump said. “And to give critically ill patients access to lifesaving cures, we passed — very importantly — the right to try.”

Drug Prices a Major Player

The subject of drug prices occupied a fair amount of time. “The next major priority for me, and for all of us, is to lower the cost of healthcare and prescription drugs and to protect patients with preexisting conditions,” he said. “Already, as a result of my administration’s efforts in 2018, drug prices experienced their single largest decline in 46 years. But we must do more. It’s unacceptable that Americans pay vastly more than people in other countries for the exact same drugs, often made in the exact same place.”

“This is wrong; this is unfair, and together we will stop it, and we’ll stop it fast,” he said. “I am asking the Congress to pass legislation that finally takes on the problem of global freeloading and delivers fairness and price transparency for American patients, finally.”

He then turned to several other health topics. “We should also require drug companies, insurance companies, and hospitals to disclose real prices, to foster competition, and bring costs way down,” Trump said. He quickly moved on to the AIDS epidemic. “In recent years we’ve made remarkable progress in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Scientific breakthroughs have brought a once distant dream within reach. My budget will ask Democrats and Republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within 10 years.”

“We have made incredible strides, incredible,” he added to applause from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. “Together we will defeat AIDS in America and beyond.”

Childhood Cancer Initiative

Although the remarks on HIV had been expected, the president also announced another health initiative that wasn’t as well-known: a fight against childhood cancer. “Tonight I’m also asking you to join me in another fight all Americans can get behind — the fight against childhood cancer,” he said, pointing out a guest of First Lady Melania Trump: Grace Eline, a 10-year-old girl with brain cancer.

“Every birthday, since she was 4, Grace asked her friends to donate to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital,” Trump said. “She did not know that one day she might be a patient herself [but] that’s what happened. Last year Grace was diagnosed with brain cancer. Immediately she began radiation treatment, and at the same time she rallied her community and raised more than $40,000 for the fight against cancer.”

“Many childhood cancers have not seen new therapies in decades,” he said. “My budget will ask Congress for $500 million over the next 10 years to fund this critical life-saving research.”

These health initiatives met with mixed reactions. “President Trump is taking a bold step to design an innovative program and strategy, and commit new resources, to end HIV in the United States … Under the President’s proposal, the number of new infections can eventually be reduced to zero,” Carl Schmid, deputy executive director of The AIDS Institute, said in a statement. Michael Ruppal, the institute’s executive director, added, “While we might have policy differences with the president and his administration, this initiative if properly implemented and resourced, can go down in history as one of the most significant achievements of his presidency.”

But the Democratic National Committee (DNC) wasn’t quite so enthusiastic; it sent an email calling the goal of ending HIV by 2030 “notable” but added, “The Trump administration has consistently undermined advancements in HIV/AIDS research, attacked people living with HIV/AIDS, and sabotaged access to quality healthcare at every opportunity.” Among other things, the administration redirected money from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program to help fund the separation of immigrant families, and proposed cutting global HIV/AIDS funding by over $1 billion, which could cause 300,000 deaths per year, the DNC said.

Abortion in the Spotlight

As for the childhood cancer initiative, “$500 million over 10 years to solve childhood cancer is … not a lot,” one Bloomberg reporter tweeted. However, Gail Wilensky, Ph.D., a senior fellow at Project HOPE, in Bethesda, Maryland, pointed out that this amount ” is in addition to the National Institutes of Health budget [for cancer] … A lot of money is going to cancer anyway [already] and the National Cancer Institute been one of the more protected parts of government, so it’s not like they have a big deficit to make up.”

Overall, “it was a surprisingly good speech,” said Wilensky, who was the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services under President George H.W. Bush. “It covered a lot of areas, and there were a number of issues that were very hard not to applaud … I thought he did a pretty admirable job of forcing applause and a sense of togetherness by the country, talking about compromise and the common good.”

The president also touched on a more controversial area of healthcare: abortion. He referred to a recent abortion bill that passed in New York State and another that failed in Virginia — both of which dealt with abortion late in pregnancy — adding, “I’m asking Congress to pass legislation to prohibit late-term abortion of children who can feel pain in a mother’s womb. Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life.”

That appeal to the anti-abortion movement “is a position that Republicans have taken in the past, which is the importance of life right after birth and life right before birth,” said Wilensky. Abortion later in pregnancy “is an area that tends to engender a more unified response than most others, even for people who are ambivalent or more supportive of abortion rights. Very late-term abortion makes people uncomfortable … It’s easy to understand why people get uneasy.”

“Already, the biggest move the Trump administration has made to control health care costs and access has been on the regulatory front,” said Bob Laszewski, founder of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, an Alexandria, Virginia, consulting firm, citing the announcement of proposed regulations to end drug rebates under Medicare and Medicaid kickback rules and rules for short-term health plans. “I take it from Trump’s remarks that they will continue with this regulatory approach instead of waiting for any bipartisanship in the Congress,” he said.

“The only area there now seems to be a hint of bipartisanship is over the issue of drug prices being too high,” Laszewski added. “It was clear from Trump’s remarks, and the Democrats’ positive response on this one issue, that this could become an area for cooperation.”

No Large-Scale Reforms Offered

Rosemarie Day, a healthcare consultant in Somerville, Massachusetts, said in an email that the president “certainly did not propose any large-scale reforms to the healthcare system during the speech, and he was short on specifics for most of it. According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, health care is the number one issue among voters so this may appear to some as a missed opportunity. It’s increasingly looking like Republicans are leaving the big health care reform ideas to the Democratic presidential candidates.”

The ideas he did propose “were mostly noncontroversial and somewhat vague,” Day continued. “The more interesting proposal was lowering the cost of healthcare and drugs, which is a high priority for consumers. The way he discussed going about it was by requiring drug companies, insurance companies, and hospitals to disclose real prices. This raises many questions, such as what does a ‘real’ price mean? … This will be an interesting area to watch, since ‘real prices’ are currently closely held secrets, and a legal requirement to disclose them would constitute a significant change from the status quo.”

In the Democratic response to the speech, Stacey Abrams, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully last year for governor of Georgia, lashed out against enemies of Obamacare. “Rather than suing to dismantle the Affordable Care Act as Republican attorneys general have, our leaders must protect the progress we’ve made and commit to expanding healthcare and lowering costs for everyone,” said Abrams, the first black woman to deliver the rebuttal to a State of the Union address.

She also spoke of her personal struggle with healthcare costs for her family. “My father has battled prostate cancer for years. To help cover the costs, I found myself sinking deeper into debt because, while you can defer some payments, you can’t defer cancer treatment. In this great nation, Americans are skipping blood pressure pills, forced to choose between buying medicine and paying rent.”

She also pushed back against state governors and legislators who continue their resistance to Medicaid expansion. “In 14 states, including my home state, where a majority want it, our leaders refused to expand Medicaid which could save rural hospitals, save economies and save lives.”

With Dems now in charge, repeal-and-replace no longer on the table!

Former Rep. John Dingell Left An Enduring Health Care Legacy

If anyone is interested in healthcare and its history here in the U.S. one must include the legacy of former Rep. John Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who holds the record as the longest-serving member of the U.S. House, died Thursday night in Michigan. Julie Rovner reviewed his history last week after his death. He was 92.

And while his name was not familiar to many, his impact on the nation, and on health care, in particular, was immense.

For more than 16 years Dingell led the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is responsible for overseeing the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the U.S. Public Health Service, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.

Dingell served in the House for nearly 60 years. As a young legislator, he presided over the House during the vote to approve Medicare in 1965.

As a tribute to his father, who served before him and who introduced the first congressional legislation to establish national health insurance during the New Deal, Dingell introduced his own national health insurance bill at the start of every Congress.

And when the House passed what would become the Affordable Care Act in 2009, leaders named the legislation after him. Dingell sat by the side of President Barack Obama when he signed the bill into law in 2010.

Dingell was “a beloved pillar of the Congress and one of the greatest legislators in American history,” said a statement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Yet, among the vast array of historic legislative achievements, few hold greater meaning than his tireless commitment to the health of the American people.”

He was not always nice. Dingell had a quick temper and a ferocious demeanor when he was displeased, which was often. Witnesses who testified before him could feel his wrath, as could Republican opponents and even other committee Democrats. And he was fiercely protective of his committee’s territory.

In 1993, during the effort by President Bill Clinton to pass major health reform, as the heads of the three main committees that oversee health issues argued over which would lead the effort, Dingell famously proclaimed of his panel, “We have health.”

Dingell and his health subcommittee chairman, California Democrat Henry Waxman, fought endlessly over energy and environmental issues. Waxman, who represented an area that included western Los Angeles, was one of the House’s most active environmentalists. Dingell represented the powerful auto industry in southeastern Michigan and opposed many efforts to require safety equipment and fuel and emission standards.

In 2008, Waxman ousted Dingell from the chairmanship of the full committee.

But the two were of the same mind on most health issues, and together during the 1980s and early 1990s they expanded the Medicaid program, reshaped Medicare and modernized the FDA, NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It was always a relief for me to know that when he and I met with the Senate in the conference, we were talking from the same page, believed in the same things, and we were going to fight together,” Waxman said in 2009.

Dingell was succeeded in his seat by his wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell, herself a former auto industry lobbyist.

House Panel Mulls ACA Fixes, Responses to Trump Policies

Now to the article of the week, Ryan Basen, a writer for MedPage noted that focusing on preventive care, expanding subsidies, and regulating association health plans (AHPs) were among the solutions proposed Tuesday to aid Americans with pre-existing health conditions, as the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee held its first hearing under the new Congress.

While the hearing was entitled “Protecting Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions,” much discussion centered around the policies within the Affordable Care Act, Republican efforts to repeal it, and recent reforms that tweaked American healthcare. Many lawmakers used their allotted time to blast other party members for either being too supportive of the ACA or attempting to “sabotage” it. Some lawmakers, however, promised to work together with members of the opposing party to help patients with pre-existing conditions — which some noted includes themselves and family members.

“Protections for people with pre-existing conditions has become the defining feature of the Affordable Care Act,” said witness Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow with the Kaiser Family Foundation; she noted that these protections also enjoy widespread public support.

The ACA forced insurance plans to accept and retain members with pre-existing conditions, many of whom could not afford plans before the legislation was enacted. But Trump administration policies and other reforms worry some experts and lawmakers that the millions of American with pre-existing conditions — ranging from moderate mental health diagnoses to cancer — are gradually being priced out of the healthcare system again, they said.

Protecting patients with pre-existing conditions are linked to controlling costs throughout American healthcare, many said. Recent legislation led to “artificial” cost increases for ACA marketplace plans and pushed some insurers to leave the market altogether, Pollitz said. These policies also have driven up premium prices.

“What we have here is an infrastructure problem,” Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) said. “The disagreements are over how to pay for it.”

“All we are really debating here is who gets to pay,” Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) said. “It’s time for radical rethinking: Are you [Democrats] willing to work with us to break down the barriers to having cost disruption?”

Several who spoke Tuesday offered potential solutions. Witness Keysha Brooks-Coley, of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, suggested lawmakers strengthen the ACA by addressing its so-called “family glitch” and eliminating the “subsidy cliff”; both policies currently withhold subsidies from many Americans who need them to pay for healthcare, she said.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, DPM (R-Ohio), called for turning lawmakers’ focus from squabbling about politics to studying preventative care. “There’s no part of me as a doctor that doesn’t want Americans to have access to quality healthcare,” the podiatrist said. “But I don’t necessarily agree with the direction (the ACA) went.”

“Let’s talk about incentivizing health: What do we have not only for the patient but for the physician?” he added. “Think about who gets rewarded in today’s system. Do we recognize the doctor who prevented the patient from needing open-heart surgery? That’s where we need to go if you want to talk about the cost curve.”

One solution is actually quite simple, according to witness Rob Roberston, secretary-treasurer for the Nebraska Farm Bureau: regulate AHPs and encourage individuals to band together in groups to reduce premium costs, as many farmers and ranchers have in Nebraska. “This is not a political issue,” he said. “This is an issue of hardship, and we need to fix these individual markets and protect pre-existing conditions at the same time.”

Alas, judging by many lawmakers’ tone during a hearing that stretched over four hours, this does appear to be a political issue. “It’s really this long debate over Obamacare,” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said. “We really need to work for a solution because Obamacare wasn’t a solution.”

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) then got into it. “What has led us here has been eight years of Republican persistence in trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “It’s great to hear they [Republicans] want to work with us and I hope they do.” The ACA is not perfect, Doggett acknowledged, but he quipped that perhaps “the most pre-existing condition” present Tuesday was “the political amnesia of those who have forgotten what it was like before the Affordable Care Act.”

Raising his voice, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) echoed the point: “If we would have been working together for the last six years to refine the Affordable Care Act, costs would be lower, coverage would be better.”

Many witnesses spoke against the Administration’s policy to loosen regulations on cheaper short-term plans that do not have to abide by ACA strictures. “The expansion of these plans does not help the consumer,” Brooks-Coley said. “It puts them at increased risk. … They are only less expensive upfront because they don’t cover [serious conditions].” In addition, Pollitz noted, many of these plans drop patients once they become ill and “have been shown to increase costs of ACA-compliant plans.”

The witnesses were asked to gauge what would happen if protections for patients with pre-existing conditions were to be removed. Younger women would pay more than men the same age, Pollitz said, and all pre-existing patients “would find it much more difficult to find coverage.”

“True harm would come,” Andrew Stolfi, Oregon Division of Financial Regulation’s insurance commissioner, told the committee. He cited Oregon’s pre-ACA experience: “You were lucky if you were even given the choice to take an insurer’s limited terms.”

Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) ended the hearing with optimism: “Today I heard a lot of members on the other side of the aisle say they support [requiring coverage for] pre-existing conditions, and I welcome that and hope we can work together.”

So, now what do the physicians think is needed to improve our health care system? Next week let’s discuss.

I had prepared two posts for tonight and wanted to hold off on the recent shootings until next week as we digest what the effect really is in our country and the future strategies. Now let’s discuss the effect of the election and in looking at the House Democrats, who have a lot to figure out on their signature issue.

Healthcare carried House Democrats to victory on Election Day. But what now?

Remember my past post reminding the Republicans the importance of healthcare in the midterm elections? We, it looks like it was an important factor in the outcomes of the “wave”. Dylan Scott spent some time looking at his prediction of what the new majority will bring to our health care system. In interviews this fall with half a dozen senior House Democratic aides, health care lobbyists, and progressive wonks, it became clear the party is only in the nascent stages of figuring out its next steps on health care.

The new House Democratic majority knows what it opposes. They want to stop any further efforts by Republicans or the Trump administration to roll back and undermine the Affordable Care Act or overhaul Medicaid and Medicare.

But Democrats are less certain about an affirmative health care agenda. Most Democrats campaigned on protecting preexisting conditions, but the ACA has already done that. Medicare-for-all is energizing the party’s left wing, but nobody expects a single-payer bill to start moving through the House. Drug prices offer the rare opportunity for bipartisan work with Senate Republicans and the Trump White House, but it is also a difficult problem with few easy policy solutions — certainly not any silver bullet that Democrats could pull out of the box and pass on day one, or even month one, of the next Congress.

Winning a House majority to ensure Obamacare’s safety is an important turning point after so many years in which health care hurt Democrats much more than it helped.

But the path forward for the party on their signature issue is surprisingly undefined.

The likely first item on the Democratic agenda: Obamacare stabilization

Democrats do have some ideas, of course. Democratic aides emphasized the various investigations they could launch into Trump’s health department, not only looking into any efforts by the White House to sabotage Obamacare but also focusing on more obscure issues like Medicare payment rates.

But wonky oversight inquiries probably aren’t the big-ticket item that new Democratic members and their voters are looking for, especially heading into the 2020 presidential election.

After campaigning in defense of Obamacare, warning about Republicans rolling back preexisting conditions protections and the Trump administration’s sabotage of the health care law, a bill to stabilize the Obamacare insurance markets would be the obvious first item for the new Democratic majority’s agenda.

Several sources pointed to a bill by Democratic Reps. Richard Neal (MA), Frank Pallone (NJ), and Bobby Scott (VA) — who have been serving as the top Democrats on leading health care-related committees — as the likely starting point. The plan is designed to build off Obamacare’s infrastructure to expand federal assistance while reversing the recent Republican efforts to undermine the law.

That bill would expand Obamacare’s premium subsidies, both by extending federal assistance to more people in lifting the current eligibility cutoff and by increasing the size of the tax credits people receive. It would also bolster the cost-sharing reduction subsidies that people with lower incomes receive to reduce their out-of-pocket costs while extending eligibility for those subsidies to people with higher incomes.

The Pallone-Neal-Scott bill would reverse the Trump administration’s recent regulations intended to funnel more people to insurance plans that are not required to meet all of Obamacare’s rules for preexisting conditions. It would also pump more money back into enrollment outreach, cut by the Trump administration, and establish a new program to compensate insurers for high-cost patients, with the hope of keeping premiums down.

Two things stick out about this bill: It would be the most robust expansion of Obamacare since the law first passed, and it is just narrow enough that, with a few sweeteners for Senate Republicans, it could conceivably have a chance to pass. Democrats are waiting to see how the GOP majority in the upper chamber reacts to losing the House.

“Undoing sabotage and bringing stabilization to the ACA markets, that’s something we should really be thinking about,” one House Democratic aide told me. “It depends on what kind of mood the Republicans are in. Maybe they’ll say that actually now that the tables are turned, we should probably sit down.”

Senate Republicans and Democrats did come very close to a narrow, bipartisan deal — it wasn’t even as robust as the Pallone-Neal-Scott bill — to stabilize Obamacare in 2017. It fell apart, ostensibly after a tiff over abortion-related provisions, but that near miss would be the reason for any optimism about a bipartisan deal on the divisive health care law.

Then again Senate Republicans might have no interest in an Obamacare compromise after gaining some seats. Democrats would still likely work on stabilization to send a message to voters on health care ahead of the 2020 campaign.

Shoring up Obamacare is a good start, but what next?

In the case, the Pallone-Neal-Scott bill might be a nice starting point — no Democrat really disagrees about whether they should help the law work better in the short term — but it still lacks any truly ambitious provisions. It is just about as narrowly tailored as an Obamacare stabilization bill offered by Democrats could be, a fact that aides and activists will privately concede.

Missing are any of the bolder policy proposals animating the left. Not even a hint of Medicare-for-all single-payer health care, which is or isn’t a surprise, depending on how you look at it.

Medicare-for-all is quickly becoming orthodoxy among many in the party’s progressive grassroots, and a single-payer bill proposed this Congress in the House (similar to the one offered by Bernie Sanders over in the Senate) has 123 sponsors.

But House Democratic leaders probably don’t want to take up such a potentially explosive issue too soon after finally clawing back a modicum of power in Trump’s Washington.

Still, the current stabilization bill doesn’t even include a Medicare or Medicaid buy-in, the rebranded public option that never made it into Obamacare but would allow Americans to voluntarily join one of the major government insurance programs. It is an idea that even the more moderate Democratic members tend to support, and polls have found three-fourths of Americans think a Medicare buy-in is a good idea.

The plain truth is House Democrats haven’t reached a consensus yet about what they want to do to cover more Americans. They agree Obamacare was an important first step, and they agree the status quo is unacceptable. But the exact mechanism for achieving those goals — single-payer, a robust public option, or simply a buffed-up version of Obamacare — is still very much up for debate.

“People will want to do something, but any further action is going to be a consensus-building process,” a senior House Democratic aide told me. “Democrats have lots of different ideas on how to continue working to reduce the uninsured.”

That is all well and good, but few issues are exciting the Democratic grassroots right now like Medicare-for-all. During the midterm campaigns, Democratic candidates and even grassroots leaders were happy to let those words mean whatever voters wanted them to mean. For some people, it meant single-payer; for others; it might mean a Medicare buy-in or something more limited.

The unreservedly progressive members who were just elected to Congress will only wait so long before they start pressing Democratic leaders to take more aggressive steps to pick up one of their top campaign issues. That pressure will only intensify as the 2020 presidential campaign heats up and Democrats debate what kind of platform they should run on as they seek to take back the White House.

For now, Democrats have tried to put off a difficult debate and focus on what unites them. But the debate is still coming.

The riddle of high drug prices still needs to be solved too

Even with Obamacare and preexisting conditions mobilizing Democratic voters this year, prescription drug prices remain a top concern for many Americans. That’s another area where Democrats know they want to act but don’t know yet exactly what they can or should do.

The issue could be an opening for serious dealmaking: Trump himself has attacked big pharma since his presidential campaign. His administration has actually launched some interesting initiatives to rein in drug costs — approving a record number of generic drugs, trying to even the playing field between America and foreign countries — that have some policy wonks intrigued, even if the impact is still to be determined.

Democrats have mostly stuck to slamming Trump for feigning to act on drug prices while cozying up to the drug industry. But it’s a top priority for both parties, and there could be some room for compromise. One progressive policy wonk thought a drug prices bill might actually be the first Democratic priority. It helps that drug prices are a populist issue that the new House majority might really be able to pass a bill on.

But first, Democrats have to figure out what exactly they are for — and what would actually make a difference.

The rallying cry for Democrats on drug prices has been letting Medicare directly negotiate prices with drug manufacturers, a proposal that Trump also embraced as a candidate, though he has since softened as president. The problem is the Congressional Budget Office doesn’t think Medicare negotiations would save any money unless the government is willing to deny seniors coverage for certain medications. But adding such a provision would surely invite attacks that Democrats are depriving people’s grandparents of the medications they need.

There are a lot of levers to pull to try to reduce drug prices: the patent protections that pharma companies receive for new drugs, the mandated discounts when the government buys drugs for Medicare and Medicaid, existing hurdles to getting generic drugs approved, the tax treatment of drug research and development. Lawmakers and the public view pharmacy benefits managers, the mysterious middlemen between health insurers and drugmakers, skeptically.

But none of those are silver bullets to lower prices, and they will certainly invite pushback from the politically potent pharmaceutical lobby, focused on the concerns about how much cracking down on drug companies to discourage them from developing new drugs. Democrats also don’t know yet what specific policies could win support from Senate Republicans or the Trump White House.

“How do you take this gargantuan Chinese menu of things and figure out how things fit together in a way that stem some of the abuses?” is how one Democratic aide summarized the dilemma.

It is a problem bedeviling Democrats on more than just drug prices. Health care was a winner on election night this year, and it has always been a priority for Democrats. Now they just need to figure out what to do.

Because tomorrow is Veterans Day I thought that I would include this article. After A Year Of Turmoil, New VA Secretary Says ‘Waters Are Calmer’

Quil Lawrence in his Twitter post reported on a wide-ranging interview with NPR, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie said his department is on the mend after a tumultuous 2018.”I do think it is better because the turmoil of the first half of this year is behind us, the waters are calmer. We’re not where we need to be, but we’re heading in that direction,” he said.

Early in Donald Trump’s presidency, the VA was considered an island of stability in an unpredictable administration.

Secretary David Shulkin was a hold-over from the Obama administration, already familiar with the VA’s massive bureaucracy. Bipartisan reforms moved through Congress with relative speed, and Trump could point to a list of legislative accomplishments.

But the president fired Shulkin last March after weeks of intrigue during which VA political appointees plotted openly to oust him. Trump’s first nominee to replace Shulkin, Rear Adm. Ronny L. Jackson, sank under accusations of misconduct (which are still being investigated by the Pentagon).

Numerous high-ranking officials left the department, and records showed that friends of the president outside of government – who weren’t even veterans – had been lobbying Trump at Mar-a-Lago on how to run the VA.

After a stint as acting VA secretary, Robert Wilkie was confirmed by the Senate last July. Since then, Wilkie says he’s been “walking the post,” visiting as many VA facilities as he can. And he’s reached the same conclusion as many of his predecessors.

“I have been incredibly impressed by the caliber of VA employee I’ve encountered everywhere, from Alaska to Massachusetts to Florida,” Wilkie told NPR’s, Steve Inskeep.

“I have no quarrel with the quality of medical care our veterans receive. My biggest problem is actually getting them into the system so that they can receive that care, which means the problems are primarily administrative and bureaucratic,” said Wilkie, himself a veteran of the Navy and a current Air Force reservist, who counts generations of veterans in his family.

“I am the son of a Vietnam soldier. I know what happened when those men and women came home,” Wilkie said. “So that is incredibly important to me.”

Wilkie is navigating an important moment for the VA – while Congress has already passed major reforms, he’s the one who has to implement them. And plenty of political controversy hides in the details.

The VA Mission Act of 2018 was signed into law in June. It’s intended to consolidate about a half-dozen programs The VA uses to buy veterans private healthcare at a cost of billions of dollars, into one streamlined system.

Critics fear that leaning too much on private care will bleed the VA’s own medical centers, and lead to a drop in quality there – and amounts to a starve-the-beast strategy of privatization.

Wilkie says that won’t happen and is not President Trump’s goal, but he has yet to present a budget for expanded private care to the White House and to Congress.

“You’re not going to privatize this institution. I certainly have never talked about that with anyone in this administration,” Wilkie said.

Wilkie also maintains that he has had little contact with the group of outside advisers who meet with the president at Mar-a-Lago, including CEO of Marvel Comics Ike Perlmutter and Florida doctor Bruce Moscowitz. Records show they had extensive communication with the previous VA secretary, sometimes influencing policy decisions.

“I met with them when I was visiting the West Palm Beach VA – my first week as acting (secretary), and have not had any meetings with them ever since that day,” Wilkie said. “I’ll be clear. I make the decisions here at the department, in support of the vision of the president.”

Despite rumors that Wilkie would clear out many of the Trump political appointees who clashed with former secretary Shulkin, he said he didn’t expect more staffing changes.

The one notable departure is Peter O’Rourke, who was acting secretary for two months while Wilkie went through the confirmation process. O’Rourke clashed repeatedly with Congress and the VA’s inspector general. Wilkie himself cited a Wall Street Journal reports that O’Rourke is poised to go and said he’s “on leave.”

“I think there will be an announcement soon about a move to another department in the federal government – I know that he’s looking for something new,” said Wilkie, “He’s on leave.”

Another major new plan that Wilkie must implement is a $10 billion, 10-year plan to make the VA’s medical records compatible with the Pentagon’s.

He once again mentioned his father’s experience as a wounded combat vet.

“He had an 800-page record, and it was the only copy, that he had to carry with him for the rest of his life. He passed away last year,” said Wilkie.

“One of the first decisions I made as the acting secretary was to begin the process of creating a complete electronic healthcare record that begins when that young American enters the military entrance processing station to the time that that soldier, sailor, airman, Marine walks into the VA.”

But that process has actually been underway for a decade – with little to show and about a billion dollars already spent on the effort. The non-partisan Government Accountability Office says it’s in part because neither the Pentagon nor the VA was put in charge of the effort — which is still the case. Wilkie says he has signed an agreement with the Pentagon to jointly run it with clear lines of authority.

“I think we’ll have more announcements later in the year when it comes to one belly-button to push for that office,” he said.

As for staff shortages, another perennial complaint at the VA, Wilkie acknowledged there are 35- to 40,000 vacancies at the agency.

“We suffer from the same shortages that the private sector and other public health services suffer from, particularly in the area of mental health,” he said.

New legislation passed this year gives Wilkie the authority to offer higher pay to medical professionals.

“I’m using it to attract as many people as we can into the system,” said Wilkie

But Wilkie also added that he was shocked, upon taking the post, that it’s not clear how many additional people are needed – because it’s not even clear how many people are working at VA.

“I had two briefings on the same day and two different numbers as to how many people this agency employs.”

Wilkie says he’s in the process of finding out the answer to that question, and many others, as he starts his second 100 days in office.

And to end this post I must include this note. I was raised in the Bronx, New York and are truly embarrassed to acknowledge that the new Congresswoman Cortes-Ortes who was elected, and not sure how when you look at her qualifications and knowledge. But more, she is a socialist and expects everything to be given to all and the government will foot the bill and now listen to this.

Ashley May, a reporter for the USA TODAY noted that the upset primary win in New York by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a huge moment for the Democratic Party because it shows the left-wing base is energized heading into the midterms, according to AP National Politics Reporter Steve Peoples. (June 27) AP

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman elected to Congress in the midterm elections, is struggling to pay rent, according to a recent interview.

Ocasio-Cortez, 29, told The New York Times she’s not sure how she will be able to afford an apartment in Washington, D.C., without a salary for three months in an interview published online Wednesday.

She told the Times she has some savings from her job earlier this year as a bartender at a Union Square restaurant, and she’s hoping that will hold her over. Living without a paycheck is something she said her and her partner tried to plan for, but it’s a hardship that’s still “very real.”

“We’re kind of just dealing with the logistics of it day by day, but I’ve really been just kind of squirreling away and then hoping that gets me to January,” she told the Times.

Ocasio-Cortez is a New York activist and Democrat who will represent the 14th Congressional district, which covers the Bronx and Queens.

Thursday, she pointed to her lack of income as a reason why some people are not able to work in politics.

“There are many little ways in which our electoral system isn’t even designed (nor prepared) for working-class people to lead,” she said.

She said she hopes she can change that.

Yes, and now if she plays her cards right she has a job, paying better than any job that she is really qualified for life.

Buck it up Ocasio-Cortez, live outside of DC and take public transportation like most people do!

How did you fund your campaign? I don’t want to hear your sob story and yes I am ashamed that the borough of the Bronx has you for their representative. What a joke! You said that when you got to DC you were going to sign a whole lot of bills and laws to make things better. Do you even know anything about the process and have you ever taken a Civics course. You are in for some big surprises… called reality!

On a better note-Happy Veterans Day and thank you all who have served in our military and those who are still out there helping to make this world a better place to live and protecting our freedoms.

Now that the Mid Term elections are upon us I can honestly state that I am somewhat ambivalent regarding the outcome. I’m pretty sure that the Democrats are going to claim the majority in the House and maybe the Republicans will hold onto the Senate. But to what end. The fighting will go on and probably nothing will get done. The Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for losing the House majority. Where was their leadership and don’t point fingers at the President? His leadership roles could be questioned but the big issue is that leader Ryan, although I like him was no leader as well as so many Republican Congressmen and women deciding to retire at such an important time and therefore not supporting their President.

The Democrats have disgusted me with their horrible behavior and attacks and playing the blame game Their leadership just sickens me during these last 2 years and them look who we have to run for the Presidency, again members who truly have made things worse, not better and not even trying to negotiate, be civil and spouting lies and attacks. As I said both parties have sunken to new lows in their behavior. I wish that we did have a significant Third Party for whom I would vote for. Again it holds your nose and vote.

Our friend, Joyce Frieden the News Editor of MedPage reported that Healthcare is expected to be a major issue in the November election — not just in Congress but also in the states. With that in mind, MedPage Today is profiling several candidates for statewide office who are focusing on healthcare issues. In our third and final profile, we speak with Jon Santiago, MD (D), an emergency room physician who is running for the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Jon Santiago, MD, saw it firsthand every day. “I work in an ER at Boston Medical Center and it’s a great job,” Santiago said in an interview with MedPage Today. “It’s a job I love in a hospital I’ve wanted to work at since I was a kid.”

Naturally, Santiago, a fourth-year emergency medicine resident, tackles difficult problems as an emergency physician — including gunshot wounds, strokes, and heart attacks. “I live for those exciting moments, but you begin to realize that working in an ER, you’re taking care of a lot of social issues — poverty, racism, sexism, and lack of economic opportunity or housing — that ultimately manifest in some kind of medical condition, and that’s when we treat them.”

“We’ll literally or figuratively put a Band-Aid on them … but it’s not until we solve the social determinants of health that we begin to [really] solve their problem,” he continued. “That’s why I decided to run for office.”

Opioid ‘Ground Zero’

As a public hospital, Boston Medical Center is “ground zero” for the opioid epidemic, both in the city and the state, Santiago said. He cited the example of Long Island, an island near Boston that houses a number of homeless shelters and recovery services. “There was a bridge to an island near Boston that overnight had to be shut down because it was dangerous, so in a matter of days, we had to move about 400 people into the [South End] neighborhood, many of whom were homeless and had substance use disorder. It really changed the community.”

In addition, for those people that had to be moved, “their continuity of care stopped, and as a result, people died … My run for office is really for these patients I take care of who need the help, but also for significant quality-of-life issues in the community.”

Santiago noted that with its many world-class healthcare facilities, Boston is considered the “healthcare capital of the state, if not the country and the world.” But the state also has its own healthcare challenges — Massachusetts’ Medicaid program, known as MassHealth, takes up 40% of the state budget. “And Massachusetts likes to pride itself that we were the first to pass health care reform, providing universal coverage, but that doesn’t mean healthcare is affordable or accessible.”

For example, “MassHealth doesn’t cover everything; there is always talk of cutting certain services,” said Santiago. “Just this past year, the governor threatened to knock out about 140,000 people from MassHealth to save money.”

Technically, the coverage rate in the state is 97%, but “the question is, if you look at what people pay for the administration of private healthcare, the costs are significantly more than a public provider would have,” he said, noting that Medicare’s administrative cost is about 10%. “Other developed countries are able to provide more cost-effective healthcare with … better outcomes.”

Santiago supports single-payer universal health care coverage for all state residents through a “Medicare for all” system. The first step toward that goal, he said, would be to study single-payer and compare the current system to what single-payer would look like “and if it would save money, I would pursue that because what we have is not really sustainable.”

An Unlikely Winner

Santiago was an unlikely winner in the Democratic primary race in his district. “I beat a 36-year incumbent who was the majority leader, the fourth highest-ranking person in the state,” he said. “What people were looking for [was] people to provide political leadership on issues that matter, and when it comes to the opioid epidemic, people were looking for solutions.” Santiago attributes his victory to a very grassroots strategy. “I personally knocked on 8,000 doors; we knocked on every door in the district. If you talk to people and listen to them, you’re better able to serve their needs.”

“The person representing this district — the center of the epidemic — should be a leader on this issue,” he continued. “Massachusetts Avenue they call the ‘Methadone Mile’ here; I live close to that. The Boston Medical Center emergency department is located there, and as an emergency department provider, it gives me initial insight into what is going on, on the ground.”

He gave an example of how, 3 years ago, his experience helped him change the law. “In my first year as a doctor, with the prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP), if someone comes in with back pain, you check to see whether they have previously been given an opioid prescription — if they have, it’s a red flag. I tried to look [at the PDMP] during my first year as a doctor, and I couldn’t access the website. I turned to my attending and he said, ‘Only attendings can.'”

But since the residents do much of the work at the hospital, “I said, ‘This doesn’t make sense,'” said Santiago. “I got the doctors together and we started a petition to provide access [to the PDMP] to the residents who do all the work. I got the petition started, met with the Boston Globe, and they covered it; we met with the governor’s staff and they changed the law overnight. Within a week or so, residents across the state were able to access the PDMP.”

Post-Election Plans

If Santiago wins the election, “my plan is to continue working as an ER doctor because I think one job really informs the other,” he said. “One job really keeps you close to the community and the issues neighbors face day in and day out, and working as a state representative addresses those issues in the policy arena.” A total of 14 8-hour shifts per month are considered full-time; Santiago said he planned to work one to two shifts a week during the legislative session, “and I’d be the only physician [legislator] in the capital as well.”

Public service is nothing new to Santiago, who served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic and is currently a captain in the Army Reserve. “I graduated from college and wanted to join the military, but I was not enthusiastic about the Iraq War,” he explained. “I wanted to serve my country, so I joined the Peace Corps … I told myself that if I became a doctor I would join the Army Reserve so I could serve in that capacity.” The reserves are pretty flexible since they only require one weekend a month and 2 weeks a year, and if you do deploy it’s only for 3 months, he added. “But they’re very flexible with you if you’re a doctor.”

In Trump midterms, one GOP congressman bets re-election on healthcare

Reporter Susannah Luthi noted that Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), in the final sprint for his congressional life, wants to talk about Medicare red tape. The message is a big deal in his hospital-dominated district that headquarters the state’s largest system, Advocate Health Care. His health subcommittee chairmanship for the powerful House Ways and Means Committee positions him to push measures that resonate when hospitals attribute 25% of their spending, or about $200 billion per year, to paperwork.

But while policy specifics may matter for his committee work and for the business of healthcare, analysts are skeptical they can prevail over the “Trump effect”—widespread rejection of the president by moderate suburban Republicans, which makes elections in places like the Illinois 6th District a national more than a local referendum.

Roskam now lags in the polls behind his Democratic challenger Sean Casten, a clean energy entrepreneur who has harnessed local opposition to President Donald Trump to pull ahead of a six-term congressman of a district that was designed as a GOP stronghold.

Questioning the 80/20 rule for healthcare

The 80/20 rule in health care underlies much of the common thinking about population health. Many value-based strategies about health care costs or utilization use this rule to describe the distribution of health care spending. Is the 80/20 rule accurate today? We analyzed recent data to find out.

He’s also struggling to make another national healthcare message local.

The term “pre-existing conditions” is headlining the cycle. The tagline has become particularly effective in light of the GOP state attorneys general lawsuit to strike down the Affordable Care Act. The Trump administration sided with the lawsuit, specifically asking the courts to overturn the provisions around community rating and other cover requirements that prohibit insurers from charging more for people with expensive, pre-existing conditions.

Roskam voted with most of his party for the GOP effort to repeal and replace the ACA, and Casten has been pounding him for it.

But on a rainy Friday in early October, as he toggled between campaign events and representational duties that involved a deep dive into CMS pay rules for disabled adults in the community, Roskam stuck with his policy line. He said this still matters in what he described as his “solution-oriented” district.

“My observation is that if the ACA were doing what it’s purported to do, the district wouldn’t be restless and they’d be quick to turn the page,” Roskam said. “But they are restless and there is a sense of vulnerability that’s out there and it’s largely financial.”

Then he pivoted to what he has been working on as a congressman: the Medicare Red Tape Relief project that culminated in a report late this summer, which he believes is more relevant for bringing costs down.

“The country feels stuck in a debate [over Obamacare] and it’s ready to get out of the ditch of the debate,” Roskam said. “It’s well litigated where both sides are on the ACA. And these continuous declarations—most people don’t find a level of connection. Which is why the red-tape relief effort resonates. ‘Yes, I get that, my doctor is looking at a screen half the time he’s with me. That’s not the way it used to be.'”

But that’s not the focus in this race. After millions of dollars in advertising from both sides, Roskam is trailing by five points in the latest FiveThirtyEight poll. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race as “lean Democratic” as Casten pummels Roskam’s record of voting 94% of the time for Trump’s agenda.

The flip is emblematic of what’s happening in moderate suburbs that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, said David Wasserman, House editor of Cook Political Report. That’s when Roskam cruised to a double-digit victory even though Clinton beat Trump by seven points in his district.

Casten, whose core issue is climate change, wasn’t necessarily the strongest Democratic candidate for the district, Wasserman added. He wasn’t the favorite in his primary and even Democratic strategists complain about his bombastic style. But none of this may matter.

“Roskam has failed to make the race a referendum on Casten, and it’s become about Trump and Roskam,” Wasserman said.

In Roskam’s case, there are also state-based headwinds: a deeply unpopular GOP governor who is motivating Democratic voters in the state, and a GOP president who is unpopular in a prosperous GOP district.

“If Peter wins, it’s because people are willing to look at him as someone who is independent of Trump and has been a good representative of the district,” a longtime GOP Illinois strategist said.

At a Casten sit-down with local members of the Illinois Alliance for Retired Americans as the group endorsed him, the dissatisfaction with healthcare played out in condemnations of Roskam’s 2017 vote to repeal the ACA. They talked about denials of care by insurers through pre-authorizations they didn’t understand, their fears about the future of coverage for pre-existing conditions, and Medicare’s solvency.

Kim Johnson, a retired state worker who is taking care of two of her grandchildren, said that one granddaughter was born with a heart condition and blasted Roskam for his 2017 vote saying that if he “had his way, she’ll have no insurance.”

But the status quo is also not enough, Johnson added, noting that she wants to see “universal healthcare.”

“I just want to see something,” she said. “I want to see something improve. We are a much better country than what our benefits are.”

Casten reiterated his support for the ACA and said he wants to look at a public option through an expansion of Medicare or Medicaid or both.

But he has steered clear of the more progressive Democratic positions. He criticized the Medicare for All proposal of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as “irresponsible” and said it made him nervous. At the table of retirees, Casten also defended the for-profit nature of the U.S. system, which he said drives the right incentives for efficiency.

He has also drawn a hard line about what he thinks about Republicans, and about working with them. “On almost everything we are arguing about, there are no areas for compromise,” specifically on the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, climate change and voting rights, Casten told a group of nursing home residents in one event.

Roskam recently ranked as the 25th most bipartisan House member out of 435 lawmakers, is banking on his district rejecting that approach. Issues like Medicare fraud and Medicare solvency matter, he said, but big policy pushes need buy-in from both Democrats and Republicans and work needs to be incremental.

Roskam has blasted Casten’s campaign speech—and his active Twitter feed—as Trump-like. But in the last stretch of the race, the rhetoric has intensified, thanks to the millions of dollars raised for ads that are barraging the district and even its surrounding counties. Campaign signs blanket lawns and the roads connecting this leafy, prosperous district.

James, a nursing home resident who had attended Casten’s event there and who declined to give his last name, said that what he will be watching for this election is what it will say about voters’ views of Trump.

“Are people catching on with what Trump is doing?” James said. “Everybody’s got a right to vote—that’s a good thing and a bad thing. Hopefully, people will catch on to what’s going on.”

Healthcare and the midterms: I’ve got you covered

Healthcare is top of mind for many 2018 midterm voters. As they select state and federal representatives, many ballots also include measures for Medicaid expansion, provider pay and other key healthcare issues. Federal policy on the future of the Affordable Care Act, drug prices and immigration reform will also affect the healthcare industry. I thought that I would use this article to summarize the MidTerm issues.

Modern Healthcare has been tracking how policy changes and discussion could affect the midterm elections. A change in House or Senate party control or governors’ races can tilt the scale on many hotly contested healthcare issues. Here we’ve rounded up our coverage on the upcoming midterm election.

Midterm elections 2018 at a glance

– 2018 elections: The future of healthcare could be purple: In the lead-up to the midterms, Democrats appear poised for gains in Republican-controlled legislatures and governor’s mansions, which could push the states to make the healthcare compromises that Washington can’t.

– In Trump midterms, one GOP congressman bets re-election on healthcare: In an intense congressional race in the Chicago suburbs, hospital ally Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) is running on an anti-regulatory healthcare message. But in a referendum election about Trump, how will that play?

– The 115th Congress on the State of Healthcare: Modern Healthcare’s 115th Congress on the State of Healthcare is a featured collection of commentaries from lawmakers and healthcare organization leaders. Included in this collection of Congressional commentaries are six editorials from U.S. Senators and eight House Representatives across both party lines.

– Data Points: Healthcare tops the polls as midterms loom: The all-important 2018 midterm elections are less than two months away. As special elections and primaries, this summer has proven, healthcare continues to be a hot-button issue.

– Editorial: Healthcare PACs voting for incumbent protection: Many Democratic congressional hopefuls are making healthcare their top talking point for the upcoming midterm elections, which is not surprising given the low unemployment rate. The early donations from political action groups lean toward the incumbents.

– House Speaker Ryan to retire with a mixed legacy on health policy: House Speaker Paul Ryan’s upcoming retirement from Congress after leading the GOP’s charge to repeal the Affordable Care Act leaves his party in a challenging place on health care messaging ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

Status of Medicaid expansion states and work requirements

– Bullish post-election Medicaid expansion outlook may not match end result: Although a new report predicts 2.7 million people in nine states could soon become eligible for Medicaid, expansion could look very different state by state.

– Medicaid expansion on the prairie: Nebraska’s ballot initiative heads to the polls: Four years into Obamacare, the majority of Nebraska voters support Medicaid expansion, a key measure on their midterm ballot. But even pro-expansion hospitals are taking a cautious view of how much it will impact the rural bottom line.

– Verma touts Medicaid work requirement successes, despite coverage loss: CMS Administrator Seema Verma insisted that Medicaid work requirements are working as intended to move people out of poverty, despite criticism that they’re doing more harm than good.

– Medicaid blues: Hospitals, insurers wage a political battle over managed-care dollars: Medicaid, the 50-year-old federal-state health coverage plan for the poor, has devolved into a political inter-industry feud in the impoverished Mississippi Delta. What does the fight foretell about the Medicaid industry and how it treats the nation’s poorest?

– Could deep-red Miss. expand Medicaid? 2019 will tell: A Mississippi state senator has introduced a bill to expand Medicaid every year since Obamacare went into effect, but so far it’s been off the table. The 2019 governor’s race could change the picture.

– Close governor races could decide future of Medicaid: Advocates say the single biggest factor in expanding Medicaid in balky states has been the election of a governor who supports it.

– Editorial: Want people off Medicaid? Give them more access to it: New research found those who gained coverage through Michigan’s Medicaid expansion faced fewer debt problems, fewer evictions, and bankruptcies, and saw their credit scores rise just years after enrolling for coverage.

– Wisconsin can impose Medicaid work requirements, time limits, but not drug testing: The CMS on Wednesday gave Wisconsin permission to impose work requirements on beneficiaries. It’s the first state to receive a green light for the policy without expanding Medicaid. The agency rejected the state’s mandatory drug testing proposal.

– Tennessee joins push for Medicaid work requirements: Tennessee is the fourth state this month to introduce a work requirement proposal for its Medicaid enrollees. Officials there believe it has a better chance of CMS approval than other non-expansion states due to its coverage policies for adults.

– House Democrats press HHS for Medicaid work requirement records: Two top Democrats on the House Oversight Committee want to subpoena the Trump administration’s documents around its Medicaid work requirement policy. HHS officials haven’t responded to their previous requests for information.

– Senate Republicans in talks with Verma to expedite states’ 1332 waivers: The Senate’s two top GOP proponents for individual market exchange stabilization measures are in talks with CMS Administrator Seema Verma about making 1332 state innovation waivers easier to obtain.

Affordable Care Act:

– Editorial: The midterm elections will decide the fate of the ACA: If the GOP maintains control of the entire government, the nation’s health insurance marketplace would look a lot like the one that existed before passage of the Affordable Care Act.

– Judge skeptical of ACA’s standing without effective individual mandate penalty: In a U.S. district court Wednesday, a federal judge had hard questions for Democratic state attorneys general who argued that the ACA can stand even with a zeroed-out tax penalty.

– ACA court case causing jitters in D.C. and beyond: A lawsuit aiming to overturn the Affordable Care Act goes before a conservative Texas judge Sept. 5. The health insurance industry and GOP lawmakers are bracing for the potential fallout.

– Uncertainty could spook insurance markets as DOJ decides not to defend ACA: The Department of Justice has asked a federal court to invalidate three key Obamacare coverage mandates, siding with a red state lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act and spurring new uncertainty for the 2019 individual market.

– Republicans weigh electoral calculus on reviving ACA repeal push: Both Republican and Democratic political observers see a narrow possibility for yet another Obamacare repeal drive this year, given intense pressure from conservatives and the urgent GOP need to fire up right-wing voters to maintain their control of Congress in this fall’s elections.

Pre-existing conditions:

– Pre-existing conditions drive state attorney general campaigns: Democratic candidates in state attorney general races have leveraged their party’s national campaign strategy around coverage of pre-existing conditions. They’re trying to beat Republican incumbents who are suing to end Obamacare.

– Will Republicans keep their new promises on pre-existing condition protections?: Despite congressional GOP candidates’ promises, health policy analysts doubt whether victorious Republicans would move to replace those ACA protections with equally strong measures to cover people with health conditions as part of repeal legislation.

– Tight Iowa congressional races key on pre-existing condition protections: The battle over pre-existing condition protections has become particularly heated in two toss-up House races in Iowa, even as unregulated Farm Bureau health plans that can use medical underwriting will go on sale Nov. 1.

– GOP senators propose new protections for challenged ACA provisions: As the country heads toward midterm elections and red states look to overturn Obamacare in the courts, Republican senators have introduced a bill to preserve some of the law’s most popular provisions.

Medicare for all:

– Verma argues ‘Medicare for all’ would cause physician shortage: In a speech to insurers, CMS Administrator Seema Verma claimed patients would struggle to find a doctor if the U.S. implements “Medicare for all.”

– ‘Medicare for all’ proves to be a tricky issue for Democrats: Progressive Democrats want to wrestle “Medicare for all” into their party’s platform. But Democratic strategists and the results of recent primaries say the country isn’t ready for it yet.

Drug prices in America

– Editorial: Drug price controls? A good idea, but don’t bet on it: Once the heat of the campaign dissipates, a majority in both parties will remain susceptible to their main argument that high prices are necessary to promote innovation.

– The fate of Trump’s Part B drug cost plan may depend on the Dems winning House: Trump’s Medicare Part B drug cost plan could move forward, particularly if Democrats win control of the House.

– New CMS pay model targets soaring drug prices: The Trump administration’s first mandatory CMS pay model is projected to save taxpayers and patients $17.2 billion over five years by shifting Medicare Part B drugs to price levels more closely aligned with what other countries pay.

– 340B showdown: Big pharma, hospitals squaring off in lobbying fight: Hospitals have adopted a take-no-prisoners approach in the fight with Big Pharma over the 340B drug discount program. Can this strategy hold as Congress, oversight agencies, the courts and the Trump administration ratchet up scrutiny of the program?

Midterms 2018 ballot measures

– Editorial: Medicaid expansion, dialysis, staffing ratios get grassroots push: Grassroots activism is behind both good and bad trends in policy. Consumer coalitions are behind Medicaid expansion ballot measures in several states, while other coalitions are pinpointing dialysis policy and staffing ratios.

Nurse-to-patient staffing ratios in Massachusetts

– Mandated nurse-to-patient ratios spark high costs, few savings: Massachusetts voters in November will determine whether mandated staffing ratios for registered nurses will go into effect Jan. 1. Implementing the ratios could cost providers $676 million to $949 million per year.

– Data Points: A state-by-state look at nurse-to-patient staffing ratios: As nurse-to-patient ratios are debated on both coasts, projections show a few states may not be able to meet future demand for registered nurses.

Dialysis ballot measure in California:

– Dialysis Cos. dole out more than $100M to beat Calif. ballot measure: With just a few weeks to go until November’s elections, the dialysis industry has raised more than $105 million to defeat a ballot measure that would cap their profits at 15% of direct patient-care costs.

– Calif. governor vetoes dialysis reimbursement cap: Dialysis giants DaVita and Fresenius won a major victory in California as Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would have slashed and capped their reimbursement rates.

Impact of immigration on healthcare

– Children’s hospitals bear the largest brunt of Trump immigration crackdown: Children’s hospitals could see their revenue dip if increased anti-immigration sentiment from the Trump administration causes an exodus from Medicaid. Chronically ill children on Medicaid primarily go to these facilities for their hospital stays.

– Clinics catering to immigrants take a hit from White House policy: Healthcare providers who care for refugees are faced with the financial strain of having fewer new patients as a result of the Trump administration’s limits on immigration.

– Healthcare groups blast proposed rule penalizing immigrants for using public benefits: The Department of Homeland Security published a proposed rule that would allow immigration officials to consider legal immigrants’ use of public health insurance, nutrition and other programs as a strongly negative factor when applying for legal permanent residency.

– Immigrant detention crisis could yield a profit for some providers and payers: The influx of immigrant children under HHS’ care translates into big contracts for providers charged with the children’s medical treatment.

– Trump’s immigrant healthcare rule could hurt low-income populations: The Trump administration reportedly is nearing completion of a new immigration rule that health care providers and plans fear will harm public health and their ability to serve millions of low-income children and families.

– What do U.S. immigration policies mean for the healthcare workforce?:

There’s been a drop in the number of foreign-born medical graduates applying for residencies in the U.S. at the same time that the country struggles with physician staffing shortages. Industry stakeholders worry the decline comes from recent efforts to stem immigration.

So, everybody hold your noses, do your research and VOTE! We’ll see what happens Tuesday!

Max Nisen for Bloomberg noted that as much as one may not like Obamacare and the sustainability of the system one must appreciate the need for the pre-existing conditions issues. This issue n most insurance policies makes it unaffordable for patients and an out for the insurance companies who always are making money.

Republican Doublespeak on Health Care Starts at the Top

(Bloomberg Opinion) — If anyone needed more evidence that Republicans are nervous about health care’s impact on this year’s midterm elections, the president provided it Thursday afternoon.

All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support. Also, Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!

In the real world, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is arguing in court that the Affordable Care Act’s protections for pre-existing medical conditions are unconstitutional and should be nullified. On top of that, his administration explicitly supported a bill passed by House Republicans that would have weakened those protections.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is also trying to have it both ways, claiming this week that Republican Senators universally support protecting people with pre-existing conditions, while voicing his support for the lawsuit and another repeal effort.

Democrats recognize that the GOP is vulnerable and conflicted on health care, and its candidates are devoting millions of dollars worth of ads to it. It’s not the only thing helping to give Democrats a strong chance of taking back the House. But it’s a key driver.

Trump and Senator McConnell are far from alone in touting their support for protecting pre-existing conditions while having voted or worked to dismantle the ACA. Many other candidates are doing the same tap dance, and are even running ads touting their support for the policy. The GOP candidates for Senate in tight races in Missouri and West Virginia are current attorneys general who is supporting the controversial lawsuit.

It’s easy to see why everybody’s anxious. The ACA’s robust protections for people with pre-existing conditions are highly popular. In a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, more than 70 percent of Americans agreed that it was “very important” that they remain law.

That gets at the heart of Republicans’ dilemma: It’s one thing to promise an end to Obamacare’s burdensome regulations while vowing to lower premiums and maintain patient protections. But it’s actually a phenomenally difficult policy problem, and the GOP hasn’t offered a proposal that solves it.

The ACA prohibits insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and from charging them more for it, ensures that all plans cover a core roster of benefits including mental-health treatment and maternity care, and bans lifetime and annual coverage limits. It supports those protections and insurers by attempting to create a large risk pool and subsidizing insurance for people with lower incomes.

If you cut out any part of that, the door likely opens for insurers to offer skimpier insurance, siphon off healthy people, and leave those with pre-existing conditions with less appealing or more expensive options. The administration is currently doing that on a smaller level by pushing cheaper but less comprehensive short-term insurance plans.

It’s theoretically possible to protect people with pre-existing conditions in other ways. But they almost certainly involve trade-offs. The one that the GOP has generally tended to favor recently is weakening protections for people with pre-existing conditions in order to lower costs for healthy people.

No GOP candidate wants to say that out loud, to admit that their definition of protection is different and less comprehensive than the status quo. Democrats are spending a lot of money to make the distinction clear.

Pre-existing conditions aren’t the only health-care sore spots for the GOP.

In past years, Republicans have run on the idea that Obamacare’s individual market is an irredeemable failure, bolstered by soaring premiums. But premiums have stabilized or declined and insurers are increasingly profitable, making it more difficult to assail the law. Premiums would be lower if the GOP hadn’t spent years deliberately undermining the market.

And referendums on the law’s Medicaid expansion, which has dramatically expanded coverage for vulnerable Americans in more than 30 states, are on the ballot in Utah, Nebraska, and Idaho. It’s implicitly on the ballot in others, where changes in the composition of state governments could push states toward expansion, or in the other direction toward Arkansas-style work requirements that push people off of the program.

If the House flips and Democrats hold Senate seats in West Virginia and Missouri, states that Donald Trump won by 42 and 19 points respectively, it’s a sign that the GOP needs to rethink its approach to health care.

Obamacare is finally working (and Republicans still want to kill it)

Rick Newman noted that President Trump might not mind if people starting calling Obamacare Trumpcare because the controversial health program signed into law in 2010 are finally stabilizing.

After several years of sharp rate hikes, insurance premiums for people participating in Affordable Care Act exchanges are actually due to fall in 2019. The Trump administration says the average premium for a typical plan will drop by 1.5% next year. That’s based on rates insurance companies must file with the states in which they operate. About 9 million Americans buy insurance on an ACA exchange.

“There’s been a lot of tumult under the ACA up till now,” says Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “But there’s no question it’s viable, in the face of significant headwinds. The ACA is embedded in the health care system.”

Insurance still isn’t cheap. The average monthly premium for a mid-level “silver” plan under the ACA will be $406 next year—69% higher than the average premium just three years ago. But steadier rates indicate that insurers have finally figured out how to properly price the policies sold on the exchanges. When the ACA first went into effect in 2014, insurers underpriced their plans. That forced them to impose sharp price hikes in subsequent years. The dramatic price swings might finally be over.

Most ACA participants receive subsidies that protect them from price hikes. But people who earn too much money to qualify for subsidies, and don’t get coverage through an employer, have gotten clobbered with soaring premiums in recent years. A married couple in their 50s can easily pay $25,000 per year in premiums alone. About 6.7 million Americans buy unsubsidized insurance on their own.

The stabilization of the ACA is actually an awkward development for Trump, who campaigned to repeal the law and has boasted that “piece by piece, Obamacare is just being wiped out.” Trump has tried to dismantle the ACA by cutting outreach and educational programs and killing reimbursements to insurance companies meant to cover the cost of low-income enrollees. Last year’s Republican-backed tax-cut bill killed the individual mandate requiring everybody to have health care coverage, effective at the start of 2019. That will probably reduce the number of people with coverage under the ACA.

More consumers approve of the ACA

Republicans, of course, came close to overturning the whole law last year—and may try again, if they retain control of Congress after this year’s midterm elections. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Reuters recently, “if we had the votes, we’d do it.”

The public doesn’t actually want that, however. Approval of the ACA has gradually drifted up from a low of 33% right before the law went into effect in 2014, to 48% in the latest Kaiser Family Foundation poll. The disapproval rate was 40%, with 11% saying they don’t know. The law could get more popular once the individual mandate is formally gone since that was one of the law’s most controversial measures.

Health care is turning out to be a potent issue in this year’s midterm elections, with 71% of respondents saying in a Kaiser poll that it’s a “very important” factor in terms of who they will vote for. That’s more than any other issue. Jobs and the economy, normally the top concern, came in second, with 64% saying it’s very important.

Democrats think they have the edge on health care, since they generally support the ACA, along with provisions that would make it work better, such as measures to make insurance cheaper for people who don’t qualify for ACA subsidies. And many Democrats now support some version of the Bernie Sanders “Medicare for all” plan, which would extend the health program for seniors to others who don’t have coverage.

Trump, for his part, has allowed more narrow insurance plans, which were generally banned under the ACA, as a way to let some people pay less for less generous coverage. But Trump’s administration has also joined a lawsuit seeking to overturn one of the most popular parts of the ACA—a provision saying insurance companies cannot deny coverage or charge exorbitant fees to enrollees with pre-existing conditions. The details are complicated, but if Trump’s side wins, some states will probably go back to the old rules of allowing insurance companies to charge whatever they want. The politics of health care seems to have a lively future.

Aging undocumented immigrants pose costly health care challenge

Tersea Wiltz working for CNNMoney recently wrote that early on a recent morning, men huddle in the Home Depot parking lot, ground zero for day laborers on the hunt for work. Cars pull into the lot, and the men swarm.

Among them is Marcos, at 65, wiry and bronzed with a silvery smile. He’s been in the country illegally for 20 years. When he’s sick, he just rests, because — like most undocumented workers — he doesn’t have insurance.

“I don’t know if I have high blood pressure,” he said. “Because I don’t check. Doctors, you know, are expensive.”

For decades, the United States has struggled to deal with the health care needs of its undocumented immigrants — now an estimated 11 million — mainly through emergency room care and community health centers. But that struggle will evolve. As with the rest of America, the undocumented population is aging and developing the same health problems that plague other senior citizens.

Many undocumented adults lack health insurance, and even though they’re guaranteed emergency care, they often can’t get treated for chronic issues such as high blood pressure. What’s more, experts predict that many forgo preventive care, making chronic conditions worse — and more expensive to treat.

“They’re hosed. If you’re an undocumented immigrant, you’re paying into Social Security and Medicare, but can’t claim it,” said Steven Wallace of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

When uninsured people end up in the hospital, that pushes up rates for those who have insurance. Or public programs like Emergency Medicaid pick up the tab. This contributes to a game of shifting costs, Wallace said.

“It’ll place a strain on the entire health care system,” Wallace said.

Growing numbers

Approximately 10% of the undocumented population is over 55 now, according to the Migration Policy Institute, but researchers agree that their numbers will rise.

“The unauthorized immigrant population has become more settled, and as a result is aging,” said Mark Hugo Lopez of the Pew Research Center.

Estimates vary on how many undocumented immigrants lack insurance. The Kaiser Foundation estimates 39 percent are uninsured, while the Migration Policy Institute, which analyzes U.S. Census data, estimates as many as 71 percent of undocumented adults do not have insurance.

Like Marcos, older undocumented people tend to be poor. The Affordable Care Act doesn’t cover them, and they don’t qualify for Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security, even though many pay taxes. Few can afford private insurance.

That means most must turn to emergency rooms or community health centers, which provide primary care to poor people, regardless of immigration status. But community health centers can’t provide extensive care, Wallace said. And because Congress has yet to fund them, their future is precarious.

Leighton Ku, professor, and director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University said immigrants, both authorized and unauthorized, are much less likely to use health care than are U.S. citizens. Until that is, they’re quite ill.

“Their numbers are going to grow and we’re going to have an epidemic on our hands,” said Maryland state Del. Joseline Peña-Melnyk, a Democrat. “Who’s going to pay for it?”

A 2014 report by the Texas Medical Association found that undocumented immigrants with kidney disease face considerable barriers to care. By the time they do get help, they need dialysis, costing Texas taxpayers as much as $10 million a year.

Stepping in to help

Many cities have tried to step in. A 2016 Wall Street Journal story noted that 25 counties with large undocumented populations provide some non-emergency health care to these immigrants, at a combined cost of what the paper estimated is more than $1 billion each year.

Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco are among the places where undocumented immigrants can usually get routine care, thanks to locally funded programs.

In Los Angeles, Dr. Christina Hillson, a family practice doctor at the Eisner Health Clinic, said she’s seeing a growing number of elderly undocumented patients, whom she’s treated for everything from ovarian cancer to amputations resulting from untreated diabetes.

Patients who are critically ill are considered emergencies and can get treated at hospitals, she said. Sometimes Hillson will send patients who aren’t as ill to the ER because it’s the only way they can see a specialist.

Snapshot of a population

Most undocumented people immigrated here when they were young and tended to be healthier than native-born citizens, Wallace said. But as they age, they lose that advantage.

Undocumented women are more likely to have family in the U.S., who can help care for them as they age, said Randy Capps of the Migration Policy Institute. But men are more likely to be single. Because they often work as manual laborers, they’re more likely to get hurt on the job, Capps said.

“They’re going to age faster and become disabled at higher rates,” Capps said. “It’s going to make for a much tougher old age.”

There’s no one easy solution to helping older residents who live in the United States illegally, health and immigration experts say.

“The policy solution for illegals is to enforce the law and encourage them to return home, thereby avoiding the problem,” said Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors limiting immigration.

Joe Caldwell of the National Council on Aging, an advocacy group, said federal immigration legislation providing a pathway to citizenship would allow seniors to access care.

Such legislation is unlikely any time soon.

Outside the Home Depot, Marcos and his friends gather in the cold sunshine. He’s been paying taxes for years, Marcos said, and he’s got pages of documents to prove it. He’d love to become documented, “but that’s practically impossible,” he said.

A year ago, Marcos said, he had tightness in his chest. He had no choice but to go to the ER, but he hasn’t followed up. He’d rather stalk the parking lot here, looking for work.

“No work,” Marcos said, “no money.”

Uber Offers In-Hospital Patient Transport with UberGURNEY

I thought that we all needed to take a break from the serious depressing news around us and from this article from a satirical blog site and I hope that it will bring a smile to all. Uber’s success knows no bounds. After infiltrating cities across the world with their groundbreaking online-based transportation service, Uber “is” infiltrating hospital buildings with their new fleet of UberGURNEY vehicles, giving patients more options to get from point A to point B within a hospital. Wow, remember they already offer rides to your physician or clinic or even to your hospital as long as you don’t need special care. So is this the next step?!?“Look, we’ve conquered roads all over the world,” said Uber founder Travis Kalanick. “What’s next? The hospital corridors of the world. Patients and nurses waste precious hours of their lives waiting for patient transport to arrive, whenever that is. Not with UberGURNEY. Just tap the app and we’ll pick you up.”

UberGURNEY does not require downloading a separate app, as UberGURNEY simply appears as another transport choice alongside UberPOOL, UberX, UberXL, and UberBLACK. Trial runs conducted at Uber’s hometown hospital, the University of California at San Francisco, have garnered positive feedback.

Nurse Connie Jenkins explains. “Endoscopy called me that my patient should be sent down. I called for patient transport but no one picked up. My patient had the Uber app, requested an UberGURNEY, and was picked up in 2 minutes. It may not sound like much, but any minute shaved off for someone NPO can save a life.” Jenkins is referring to an unfortunate incident earlier this year when a patient claimed he was starving to death after 1 hour NPO and actually died of hunger 1 hour later.

Feedback from patients has generally been positive as well.

“I really needed a turkey sandwich bad,” explained patient Ollie Nelson, rubbing his tummy with conviction. “I gave UberGURNEY a whirl. In three minutes, a driver picked me up and took me from my room to the cafeteria. It was fantastic.” Nelson did note one issue, however, a complaint about many long-time Uber users. “After I ate my sandwich, it was like 5 PM. Those surge prices are for real! Fifty bucks just to get back to my room! Maybe I should’ve walked.”

UberGURNEY will be rolling out in major academic institutions nationwide, including the Mayo Clinic, who revolutionized the transport game in 2014 with their pneumatic tube system for patient transport. UberGURNEY is in its early stages but should it reproduce the success of its car service, Uber expects to offer an expanded fleet of UberGURNEYs with UberGURNEYBLACK for those who are willing to pay more for a private gurney and UberBODYBAG for those unfortunate patients who have died and wish to head to the morgue immediately.

Now imagine the self-driving cars picking you up and then transporting you around the hospital in driverless gurneys and our patients cared for by robot docs and nurses. Think about computer APPs and telemedicine, which is already here. Unbelievable!! Stay tuned!!